Failing to Prepare Is Preparing to Fail

I’m spending this 105-degree Sunday afternoon throwing back a few cold ones. As much as I’d like to say I’m enjoying icy margaritas on this sweltering day, I’m spending the next few hours drinking 8 ounces of GaviLyte-C, a colon-cleansing “cocktail,” every 15 minutes to prepare for my colonoscopy tomorrow morning.
I usually write my column on Monday before publication, but because I’ll be sleeping off the anesthesia, I thought I should write it a day early while I’m coherent.
At the beginning of my Crohn’s journey, I had a colonoscopy every two years. But when my father was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2012, my gastroenterologist became more cautious of my health and now schedules me to have a colonoscopy every year, along with an upper endoscopy every two years.
Call me strange, but I actually enjoy getting colonoscopies. When I was teaching full time, I would schedule the procedure for a few days after submitting students’ final grades for the semester. After an entire academic year of long nights and weekends grading student work, I looked forward to the 30 minutes or so of heavy sedation. I would wake up feeling so relaxed that I would tell my husband it was the best sleep I got the entire year.
The colonoscopy itself is a breeze. I don’t even mind drinking the gallon of medication that sends me running to the bathroom for hours on end. The most difficult part for me is meal planning for the three days prior to the procedure. Preparation protocol requires following a low-fiber diet for two days followed by more than 24 hours of a clear-liquid diet.
The list of allowed foods and foods to avoid is pretty lengthy. As someone who loves to cook and eat, I can’t make many of the recipes in my repertoire because most of the in

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